In the novel A Christmas Carol (ACC) Dickens employs a range of techniques to convey how the rich and the poor have a massive disparity between them due to wages, charity and educational differences. Throughout the novel, Dickens has the recurring idea that the rich are responsible for the poor and that the rich should give more to the poor which is why this novel was dedicated to Christmas - the conventional tradition of giving. This is a dramatic text so that it can both entertain but teach its readers the responsibilities of the rich. Dickens the Malthusian economics idea to depict to his readers the massive disparity between the rich and the poor. In Stave 1, Scrooge believes 'if [the poor] would rather die they had better do it and decrease the surplus population'. This …show more content…
For example, The ghost of Christmas presents says 'the boy is ignorant and the girl is wanting... written Doom which is waiting to be erased'. Dickens uses children here to represent how innocent people in poverty are, but without education, they cannot excel in their society. Furthermore, Dickens suggests that this lack of education can lead to a rebellion of the poor against the rich which can lead to war - if the rich doesn't want this to happen, they have to look after the poor both in education and wages. In addition, Scrooge directly disregards his clerk, Bob Cravitt. For example, he says'my clerk with fifteen shillings a week and a wife talking about a merry christmas'. Scrooge explicitly shows that he knows that the wages he pays Bob aren't high enough to provide for his family. However, Bob doesn't quit his job, from this the readers can infer that the wage that scrooge is paying is not an outlier and that this is the ordinary wage for the lower class. This causes more poverty and therefore causes more children like 'Ignorance', 'Want' and Tiny Tim to